Anna Deavere Smith is an actress, playwright, teacher, and author. She is credited with having created a new form of theater. Smith's work combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance.

Smith has created over fifteen one-person shows based on hundreds of interviews. Her most recent play, Notes from the Field, looks at the vulnerability of youth, inequality, the criminal justice system, and contemporary activism. The New York Times named it among The Best Theater of 2016 and Time magazine named it one of the Top 10 Plays of that year. In 2018, HBO premiered the film version of Notes from the Field. Smith’s play Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 was recently named one of the best plays of the last twenty-five years by The New York Times.

Smith was recently seen as Clerk of Court Tina Krissman on the Shonda Rhimes produced television series For the People. She also appears on the hit show Black-ish. Previously she appeared in Nurse Jackie and The West Wing. Films include The American President, Philadelphia, RENT, The Human Stain, and Rachel Getting Married.

President Obama awarded Smith the National Humanities Medal in 2013. Additional honors include the prestigious MacArthur Award, The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for achievement in the arts, the George Polk Career Award in Journalism, the Dean’s Medal from the Stanford University Medical School, two Tony nominations and several honorary degrees. She was runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. In 2019, she was inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a University Professor at Tisch School of the Arts.

Sarah Rodman is the Entertainment Editor, covering TV and music for EW.

She is the former television editor of the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she was the TV critic and pop music critic at the Boston Globe. Prior to that she held those same positions at the Boston Herald. Rodman is a Boston native and a graduate of Ithaca College.